Snow in the Wind
by reenakitty
Summary: Jack Frost once saw a little girl through a window, displaying abilities with ice that only he thought he possessed. He turned away without looking back, never giving thought to her before finding her again years later. Jack never imagined that seeing her would grow to be more than just a game, or that she would change his view on the world in such a short time.
1. Prologue

**Hello! I left FFNet for like a year, but I decided to come back and get serious about practicing my writing. And, through that, my Jelsa fanfiction was born. WOOOOO. ****I recently watched Frozen at the theater, and immediately went home and watched it online again the same day. And then I watched it again the day after. To tell you the least, I really liked Frozen.**

**And I've always loved The Rise of the Guardians, so of course this pairing was for me. **

**Note that this takes place a little over one hundred years after Jack becomes a winter spirit, so he is still on his own and has around two hundred years until he becomes a guardian. It also explains the fact that it seems to be a slightly medieval-ish age in Arendelle, because it was probably a century or two ago. Hope you enjoy! :'D**

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The North wind was cold as ice, and almost all the light had died from the sky. A pale boy with equally pale hair was spinning through the wind as if it were a stream of water, crowing and laughing, alone in the gale. His simple, less-than-warm garments looked frozen in the swirl of snowflakes in the air, until an even stranger vision could be seen: the boy was creating the snowflakes himself, streaming them from his fingertips. He was high above the dark, distant ground, riding nothing but the ferocious winter breeze.

The boy's name was Jack Frost, and he had awoken in a winter's night more than one hundred years previous. Jack had no idea of his purpose in the world, and lived each day as it came, never letting himself form habits or routines. He usually ignored his constant longing for the companionship of other people, but as the years swept by, each faster than the last, it was an almost continuous ache. Having no memory of his life before awaking in that long-ago winter, Jack rarely spoke to anyone for one painful reason: no child, adult or person of any kind could see him. All he knew was that his name was Jack Frost, and that he was seventeen years old. His age or face had never changed, even when he had existed through his first century, nor after.

Pinpricks of light grew in the distance, and Jack dropped farther down in the sky, watching as the city that was sprawling below him grew larger in his gaze. The wind whipped around him, untamed and wild, sometimes lowering him smoothly through the air, and then suddenly dropping him several meters the next second. It was only a few minutes before the city became level with Jack, and he landed lightly in a tree. He crouched, swinging his staff and in slight awe of the castle in front of him. It was probably around a mile in the distance, with a bustling tangle of buildings and streets separating Jack's tree and the large gates of the majestic structure, but Jack could see almost every detail.

Without a second thought and with his usual air of non committed interest, Jack swung from a branch and into the empty air, falling a few feet before the wind caught him. He sped through the wind and into the town with another shout of laughter, as he flipped over a pedestrian man who was unable to see him. He wordlessly told the wind to drop him lower, and swung his wooden staff along the ground, creating patches of ice on the side of a street near a group of children. The wind continued moving him forward, but he heard the delighted shouts of the children as they slid around the ice, before leaving the streets behind in his wake. All that was ahead of him was the huge castle, light spilling out of several windows and across the frozen snow. The sky was fully dark now, the stars able to be seen under a sparse layer of clouds, and the castle looming closer and closer.

Jack jumped out of the air and onto the castle wall as he arrived near it, landing silent and steadily as a cat. He stood up, walking along the wall and deciding what it was that made him go to the castle. It was a large structure of stone, heavily locked and guarded. Not that that would stop Jack if he had a sudden want to enter the castle.

Instead of inspecting the frozen lawn and the impressive front doors, Jack walked along the top of the wall until he reached the corner, and then walked along the next wall. He looked only at the castle, his eyes searching its many windows, covering the side of the building with little stone in between each pane to spare. The moon was large and bright, casting shadows on the base of the castle. Jack, however, looked at his other source of light; the windows.

Each window held a story. The first he came to had a fire dancing merrily inside the stone chamber, looking quite warm despite the frigid air that was outside. It had several large, wooden tables which were overflowing with what looked like unprepared, fresh vegetables. Another room was dimly lit, with bookcases against the far wall. One window was so grimy that Jack could only see a faint, rosy glow through the crusted glass. He imagined people living inside of each room in the castle, and dimly wondered who owned the place.

Turning another corner, a large tree was growing almost against the castle wall, covering a few windows. Beyond the wall, to his left, stretched a forest, nestled next to the castle. Jack gazed to the top of the tree inside the walls, which was around seven stories up, and saw a large, triangular window glowing with light directly next to the topmost branches. He had moved his gaze on, when the light turned off abruptly. Jack's gaze flicked back to the window involuntarily. It was dark and empty for a moment, before a small figure walked past in the shadowy light behind the glass.

In an instant, the wind had sensed Jack's intentions and snatched him up. He flew silently to the tree, landing with perfect balance several feet below the triangle of the window. Something kept him from showing himself, even though he knew that no human would see him. He climbed effortlessly to a place in the tree that was just above and diagonal from the window, so he could see inside at a slight angle, and would still not quite be in view from inside.

It was a dark, obviously large room with light blue, shadowy walls. A tall bed was off to the side, and there was plenty of furniture spread throughout the space. The room still had an empty feeling to it, since it was so big. Jack couldn't help but think that he would rather have a smaller room, if he ever had a room anywhere at all.

His view was suddenly interrupted as a child walked to the window. It was a small, pale girl, probably around the age of six, who had braided hair as white as the snow on the ground. Her posture was upright and elegant, even as a child, her clothing uncreased and expensive-looking. Jack imagined a rich older woman would look the same way. Her eyes were sad, glinting beneath the window, blue as ice.

Jack thought of his own blue eyes and white hair, and wildly wondered for a fraction of a second what it would be like to have a sibling, before he brushed the thought away. The girl was very obviously human, and, although Jack was not sure what he was, he was certain that he wasn't human. Humans aged, and Jack did not age.

The girl was looking outside with longing and sorrow, her entire expression that of an already determined, sad fate. Jack recognized the emotion as what he constantly tried to crush down whenever he felt particularly upset that the people around him could not see him. Desperate wanting for something that should have been theirs, but still outside of their grasp. She stared at the horizon as if their was a battle being fought below the window that had already been lost.

Jack sat down on the branch, setting his staff down across his lap and leaning against the tree trunk, his brow furrowed with barely suppressed feelings of frustration. The way the little girl looked had awakened how he felt beneath his attitude that 'everything was alright'.

_Poor kid. I wonder what's wrong._

The girl stretched a hand out, as if reaching for the world outside, and touched the window. In an instant, frost crackled several inches across the glass and froze the pane, the ice trailing across the window from her fingertips. The girl's hand jumped back, and she cradled it to her chest, her eyes wide and scared.

Jack jumped back at the same time, from his relaxed position into a crouch, gripping his staff and holding it in front of him. His heart pounded in his ears, and he stared wildly as the girl stood, in front of the window. Her expression was scared, but in a strange way. Jack expected a human who had just created frost from nothing to be shocked and terrified. There was definitely fear in the child's face, but not even a touch of surprise. There was only a accepted certainty - a sad and frightening fate already determined. There was only one explanation: that the girl already knew that she had the ability.

Jack sat, frozen in his crouch concealed in the snow-laden tree branches. He watched as the girl stood for a few more moments, keeping her hand against her chest, before climbing into the bed in the darkness of the huge room. He watched the sleeping child for at least an hour, before abruptly standing and willing the wind to carry him back to the tree he had first landed in, across the town and about a mile away from the castle.

There, in the tree, he relived in his mind the child spreading frost along the window, with a single touch of her hand. It was undeniably strange, but, when he looked at his own hands, he no longer felt like a freak of nature. Standing, he took one last look at the castle before letting the wind fly him up, high into the dark, cold sky and away from the sleeping, snow-covered city.

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**There we are, a short prologue to set up the rest of my short story. More to coooooooome.**

**I'LL BE YOUR FRIEND IF YOU REVIEW AND GIVE ME CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM AND FEEDBACK.**

**Ciao!**


	2. Night One

**YO. Annnnnnnnnd here's the first chapter. Hope you like it! :D**

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It was a frigid December morning in Burgess, Pennsylvania. Jack Frost was sitting on the base of a church's steeple, surveying the small, awakening city as the sun rose above the trees, bringing a faint pink into the dark gray sky.

It was a little over ten years since he had seen the huge castle in the far away city, yet few changes had taken place in the world that Jack had noticed. Jack saw the paper boy making his rounds, delivering the news papers around the city. There didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary, because the paper boy looked like his usual bored self, hardly glancing up as he tossed paper after paper at different household's welcome mats.

Only later that afternoon did Jack care to even look at the news paper. He didn't really enjoy reading all that much, but he had seen a few people talking with interest about the news, and he felt almost as bored as the paper boy had been. He was walking down a narrow, cobblestone street lined with houses when he saw one of the papers from the morning, skittering along the stones of the road and damp with snow. Jack would not have even given a second glance to the paper if he had not remembered the couple conversations he had heard only a few hours previously, chattering about an article.

Jack picked the paper up off of the street and sat down unceremoniously in a snowbank on the side of the rode. He brushed a little snow off of the paper so that the words were visible. Ruffling his hair out of habit, he read the headline, "_New Heir of the Arendelle Throne_". Accompanying the title was a small article, tucked into the corner of the page, which talked about the king and queen of Arendelle deciding that their oldest daughter would be the heir to the throne in the future. It had been speculated that the daughter hadn't been named heir before because the king and queen were planning on having a male heir yet, but the rumors had been laid to rest.

Above the article was a small, grainy black and white photo of a spectacular and familiar castle. Jack suddenly had a flashback of watching the very same castle in the snowy darkness, and of a little girl in a large, triangular window, frosting the glass with her fingertips.

Jack set down the paper in the snowbank beside him, and took to the air with the help of the icy wind. He always thought clearer when he was high above the ground. In a few seconds, the town of Burgess had been reduced to a square of colors on the distant landscape below, and Jack was among the clouds. It was cold and wispy, like standing in a snowy fog, but Jack swung his staff in the air beside himself and ran over the different outcomes in his mind.

It was only a few minutes before Jack shook his head at his own thoughts. He laughed out loud, the decision made.

_I don't have anything better to do._

The wind was suddenly in movement, and Jack sped north through the clouds.

* * *

It was night when Jack reached the castle.

The windows were, again, all lit up, and it looked only as if minutes had passed since Jack had last been there, instead of an entire decade. The whole way to the castle he had been musing about who the heir was, when he had a feeling that he already knew.

Jack took no time surveying the castle walls as he had his first visit, and rode the wind all the way around the castle until he saw the old, large tree that looked as it were leaning up against the side of the magnificent building. The top of it's branches only brushed the tip of a large, triangular window, already dark, with glass glinting in the starlight. Jack landed in the up most branches of the tree with a slight sense of deja-vu, crouching right above the window and peering inside. However, he only had a moment of relaxation in the tree, as a great scraping sound suddenly ground into the noiseless night, and the glass of the window warped as its bottom half was opened upwards.

In a single moment, Jack had unconsciously jumped backwards, landing still in the tree, but concealed from the view of the window by other branches. A pair of blue gloved hands were the only things that Jack could see from his new angle, farther back in the tree, barely visible on the stone windowsill. Forgetting that he was invisible to others, Jack hid himself more securely in the branches, until he was unnoticable between the green of pine needles and the white of the snow.

The hands were suddenly followed by a body, a girl propping herself out of the window and onto the sill. She wore a midnight-blue dress and a violet cloak around her shoulders along with the blue gloves, and her snow-white hair was knotted at the back of her head, somewhat messily. Stray locks of hair stuck up around her face. Yet Jack was not paying attention to her hair, because it was immediately clear that the little girl that he had seen in the window ten years ago was a little girl no longer. With a slight expression of shame and slight, guilty eagerness, the girl's ice-blue eyes were wide and purposeful, flickering around for the trace that someone would catch her. Jack stayed silent and unseen.

Deeming the coast clear, the young heir of Arendelle switched her gaze to a branch of the tree that stretched underneath her window. With the practiced ease of someone who most likely climbed from her window and into the tree quite often, the girl pushed herself off the windowsill and landed on the branch, letting the momentum propel her into catching herself on the tree trunk. With a slight breath of relief, the girl picked her way down the remaining seven stories of the tree, the hard part apparently done.

Jack watched as she jumped to the ground from a low branch, hurried to a small gate in the side of the castle wall, looked back once, before disappearing beyond the wall. He waited until she was fully out of his vision before he took to the wind and reached the snowy ground. He decided to follow her the rest of the way on foot.

Through the gate and past the wall, Jack watched the footprints of the girl leading into the dark forest. He himself left no trace of his presence in the snow, but the trail of the girl made her easier to track. The forest grew darker still as the little moonlight that managed to filter through the entwining branches of the leafless trees became more and more sparse. Jack could see the girl a little farther ahead, and he made little effort to hide himself, unless she turned around to look back. Then he would immediately dart behind the closest tree, barely concealing an amused chuckle, or jump into a tangle of branches above the path. He was still unsure why he was hiding himself, when all past experiences with humans had led him to believe that not one person alive could see him.

When Jack was growing a bit uneasy to why the princess was traveling so far into the woods at night, she appeared to stop, and Jack stopped as well, although he was still quite far inside the cover of trees. The girl had found an opening, because Jack could see that she was standing in a clearing of moonlight, although the source seemed brighter than the light of the moon even beside the castle. He moved his head slightly and saw a glitter across the ground in front of her. The princess was standing on the edge of a lake, bathed in a cold glow.

Jack decided to break off from the path, and headed into the dense, yet brittle and dead undergrowth to his left, ghosting over the snow and around the trees. After a few moments, he too was at the edge of the lake, looking over the frozen water, gleaming as if under a silver sun. Still slightly under the cover of trees, Jack was mostly concealed from the girl, although he could see her bright violet cloak through the small gaps in the branches.

She appeared to be simply staring out, across the lake. Jack walked towards her a few paces, until he was directly behind the spiny tree that hid him from the girl. He peered around to see her expression, and wasn't surprised that, once she came into view, she looked on the verge of tears. She was looking at the moon as if it had wronged her, and her hands, which were clasped in front of her, were shaking slightly.

Several more minutes passed before the girl knelt down to sit on the frozen shore, her cloak spreading out, a splash of color on the snow. She lifted her hands out in front of her, palms up, and stared at them, apparently willing for an answer to show itself. For a moment, she looked as if she were about to pull one of her gloves off, before she abruptly decided otherwise, taking one arm and cradling it to her chest with her other. Her gaze returned to the moon, and Jack, feeling reckless, turned and entered the forest again. He was only a few paces from the lake shore as he walked towards the girl, but he was again, concealed in the undergrowth. After a few moments, he was directly behind her, behind a tree; silent and unmoving.

She was still bent over on the ground. With a sudden chill down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold, Jack stepped out from the cover of the trees. For a moment, he thought about his other experiments, and how no one had ever been able to see him. The girl still sat, turned away from him in the snow, unnoticing. Jack didn't realize that he was holding his breath, until he hitched his staff lower in his hand and skimmed it over the ground, making a crackling sound in the slightly frozen snow.

Immediately, the girl whirled around, suddenly on her feet, her eyes wild and shocked. Jack waited, not feeling to his own racing heartbeat. The unconscious need to hide himself from this girl for the last hour had to mean something.

There was only one thought in his head. _Please. Please, please, please. Let this loneliness be finally over. Please._

And, in a single moment, his question was answered. With a shriek, the girl staggered backwards, her eyes widening with fear as they found him. She tripped over a stick on the shore, and fell, backwards, onto the frozen lake. A flash of panic ripped through Jack as he saw her, on the ice, and he leaped forwards from his stance in the snow, immediately by her side and trying to help her up. He did not know why the sudden fear of her falling through the ice hit him, but, when he was crouched beside her, he regained rational thought. He realized that the ice by the shore was most likely several inches deep, if not frozen solid, and that she was not in any danger at all.

The girl yelled again, in fear, and scooted backwards, away from Jack, before getting up and jumping onto the shore. As soon as she hit the ground she was running, her cloak billowing out behind her in a violet cloud. Jack saw how fast she was, and realized with frustration that he was going to have to fly to catch her, and flying would probably scare her even further. With a groan of annoyance, Jack was caught up by the wind, and sped towards her. He easily overtook her in only a few seconds, and whipped around. He landed on the ground, hard, facing her as she ran towards him. He realized a second too late that he had timed the distance between them wrong, and that she was running too fast to stop.

The girl bowled Jack over with another muffled scream. He blinked the dizziness away, on the ground, realizing that he had hit the back of his head. The girl had landed on top of him, and was currently struggling to disentangle her limbs and her cloak from him, breathing fast and hard, tears of fear gleaming on her cheeks. Before she had the chance, Jack flipped them both over, so that he was on top of her. She yelled again, struggling harder than ever, and he had to pin both of her wrists down in the snow.

"What do you want?" screeched the girl, spitting hair out of her mouth. All elegance that she had retained previously was gone. Jack watched her with slight amusement, as she had the exact expression of an angry dog that he had seen a few years previously, her pretty face twisted in fear and rage. "Get off of me - you - you _freak_ -"

The girl again began struggling, furiously attempting to loosen Jack's hold on her wrists. He, in reply, tightened his grip, watching as her fear got the better of her. She stilled, breathing heavily, and her anger left her face. She looked tired, terrified and desperate.

"Please let me go," said the girl, starting to tremble. She still looked slightly determined to escape, but Jack could tell that the fight was leaving her.

Jack, finally relaxing, slowly let the situation dawn on him. There was a living, breathing, human girl, right in front of him, who could see him. Her body was underneath of him, the skin of her wrist tangible in his hands, when every other human before her could simply walk through Jack as if he was not even there.

"You can see me? You're human?" asked Jack breathlessly, still shocked and unsure.

"What are you even talking about? Are you crazy?" yelled the girl, struggling again for a moment before she was, again, spent. The replied questions were answer enough.

Jack laughed, and then laughed again, harder. Wonder and excitement charged through his entire being, and he jumped up, off of the girl and did a flip over her. Apparently in shock, the girl gave him a look that told him he was clearly insane. She scrambled up, turning to sprint down the path again, but Jack grabbed her arm, stopping her. She looked back at him, glaring with her tear streaked face as he continued to grin uncontrollably.

"Let_ go_ of me!" she shouted, attempting to yank her arm from his grasp.

"No, I don't think I will," said Jack, making his decision.

A small sob escaped from the girl in desperation, and Jack suddenly realized how - well, _inhuman_ he was being. Without releasing his grip, he attempted to reassure her.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said, "God, I'm never going to hurt you. You're the first person that has been able to see me in so long. . ."

The length of the time that he had been alone dawned on him, and he almost shuddered. The girl, taking advantage of his moment of distraction, yanked back her arm again and almost went free.

"No, you don't understand, it would probably be the worst thing in the world for me to hurt you, I mean, I could kiss you!" Jack said quickly. He immediately realized it was the wrong choice of words when he saw the girl's look of complete disgust.

"Hey, it's just an expression," Jack fumbled.

The girl stayed silent, still looking slightly panicked.

Jack thought for a moment, choosing his words carefully. "Okay, I'm going to let you go, but you have to remember that if you run away, I'm just going to catch you again."

The girl stared at him. It was several moments before she gave a short and fast nod.

Jack turned around so that he was facing down the pathway, towards the lake. He slowly let go of her arm, and the girl snatched it back, rubbing where his grip had left an indent in her skin. He felt bad for a minute, watching as her eyes desperately darted around, trying to find a crack in his barrier. He was blocking her way to the castle.

"The g-guards will be here any minute now. I told them that if I was gone longer than half an hour, that s-something was wrong," said the girl after a moment.

"No, you snuck out of the window, and I doubt that anyone knows you're outside of your room," replied Jack.

The girl shuddered, her last and most desperate card having been played. She looked sad and almost defeated.

"What do you want from me?" she finally said, quietly, her anger at herself for being so helpless, obvious.

Jack thought for a moment, trying to decipher his feelings. "I want to talk to you, I want to know what the world looks like from someone elses eyes, what it's like to live with other people, your daily routine -" he stopped, unable to word the rest of his thoughts.

The girl just looked even more scared. Her white hair was messy and tangled around her face, half up and half around her shoulders, glinting with silver in the moonlight. Her blue eyes had still not yet lost their wideness of shock.

She, again, stayed silent.

Jack tried to think of how he could make her relax a tiny bit. "At least tell me you name?"

It was another minute before she answered. "N-No."

Jack sighed, sadness and frustration mixing together as he stepped aside, showing her the empty path heading back to the castle. He was done. The girl obviously was not going to relent.

She gave him the same look as she had a few minutes before, letting him know that, in her eyes, he was mentally insane.

"You're strange," was all she said, before taking off down the pathway, running towards the castle. She did not look back once.

Jack sighed again. He had lost this time, but he was in no means going to give up. He had lived alone in the world for too long.

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**There we are. Yep, done. Woo.**

**And, just letting you know, when Jack got really freaked out that Elsa was on the ice, it was like his subconscious was telling him, "Bad things happened when a girl you cared about almost fell through ice." And, without remembering how he sacrificed his life to save his sister, he still remembered the feeling of fear for her life. THE MORE YOU KNOW.**

**Byeeeeee.**


	3. Night Two

**Sorry I haven't updated in awhile. It's the last week of the semester, and I was too busy freaking out and studying for two finals every night to find time to write. -.- Feeling pretty drained.**

**But, nonetheless, here is your update! Thanks Scryer-LuqGaru, MaidOf60Seconds, Tears of a Spirit, Guest, annimo 2, Smallsparrow, Miki Mae, hogwartsjaguar, jinx777, and Minnie for reviewing! YOU GUYS ARE SO WONDERFUL AND NICE. I DEDICATE THIS CHAPTER TO ALL OF YOUUUU.**

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Jack was sitting in the tree outside of Elsa's large, triangular window. It had taken the better part of the last couple of days for Jack to finally overhear the girl's name. He had been listening for it ever since he let her run past him in the woods, butting his head into quite a lot of conversations inside the town until he found success in one of the local shops. He was currently relaxing in the crook of a couple branches, his staff laying across his lap, his arms crossed behind his head. He had waited each night, under the light of the waxing moon, sometimes dimmed by clouds, for Elsa to again sneak out from the window. Jack couldn't help but relive his first meeting with her in his head several times over, trying to take it apart and decide what went wrong and what he could have done differently.

Jack was frustrated. He had never even talked to a human before, let alone a human girl, and he barely knew how to speak properly when he was interacting with other talking beings. He wanted to fix whatever it was that he had done. He guessed that perhaps straddling and trapping her had been a bit of a set-off, but what else could he have done? He had only been trying to stop her long enough to get her to listen, and she would have run away if he hadn't done anything. Jack was frustrated and confused. He wished that maybe a boy his own age had been the one to first see him; that would have made all of this confusion much clearer.

Then there was the matter of Elsa's powers. She hadn't shown any traces of it when he had seen her the few nights before, but she had had them when she was a child. And Jack had a feeling that Elsa was simply trying to conceal her abilities now, judging by the look on her face when she had thought she was alone on the shore of the frozen lake. If she tried not to feel them for too long she would probably explode. Jack lifted a hand and silently willed frost to grow on his upward facing palm. Instantly, the cold obeyed, crackling upwards through the air, fractals branching out until he held a spiky statute of frost in the shape of a perfect, eight point snowflake. It was effortless, natural. Jack wondered how the ability worked for Elsa. He silently commanded the frost to shatter in his hand, and he hefted up his staff, touching it to the underside of the branch above him. Where the wood met wood, ice spiraled across the bark until the branch was patterned far more intricately than the other frost on the other branches.

Just as it had the first time, the grinding of the opening window startled Jack. He jumped into a crouch, his staff gripped tightly in his hand. The only difference now was that the thing making his heart beat so fast was adrenaline, excitement, hope, and slight relief. In that moment he didn't care that Elsa was a girl.

She climbed onto the window almost stiffly, the tension she was feeling immediately evident. She didn't meet his eyes, but clearly knew that he was there.

"What took you so long?" exclaimed Jack, deciding that it would be better to be blunt than beat around the bush. "I've waited out here for, like, three days."

Elsa pushed herself off of the window ledge, and landed with practiced balance, dusting herself off without removing her blue gloves. "That isn't my fault."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Uh, yeah, it is."

Elsa looked at him for the first time, and in her glaze was a dignified glare. Her fear was only somewhat concealed, her hands trembling slightly in their clasped position in front of her. Without another word, she moved and started climbing the tree nimbly towards the ground. Jack stared after her for a moment as she descended, frustration prickling the back of his neck, before he jumped out of the tree, and landed on the ground, having reached the snow several moments before Elsa. Jack crossed his arms as he looked at Elsa, slightly triumphant at the shocked wideness of her eyes as she watched him take the seven-story drop, light as a feather. Her face immediately hardened however, and as soon as she reached the ground she turned and began to walk regally forward, her cloak cutting a billowing path through the icy wind towards the gate to the woods. Jack followed her, a few steps behind, a little at loss for things to say. How could he talk to her if she would never reply?

They passed through the gate and into the trees. The moon was hidden behind a few clouds, so it was less bright than in had been three nights ago.

When they had been walking down the path for some time and Jack could see the lake in the distance over Elsa's shoulder, the girl stopped suddenly. Jack stopped as well, almost holding his breath, waiting warily.

There was another few minutes where Jack stared at the violet back of Elsa's cloak. She finally turned, and the cloak turned into a deep purple wave in the air, wrapping around her body as she spun around. Her face was angry and confused, guarded and just as wary as he was.

"Who are you?" asked Elsa through clenched teeth. She stared at him as if the fate of the world would be determined from his reply.

Jack swallowed. "I'm Jack Frost."

"Where are you from?" she shot back immediately. However, some of her urgency left her after the first question was over, and it was clear that Jack intended to cooperate.

"Burgess, Pennsylvania."

"Why are you here?"

"To talk to you!" Jack said, brandishing his staff almost aggressively in his eagerness. Elsa took a step back, unconsciously swiping a hand over her braided hair.

Jack immediately took a step forward to follow, without thinking.

"Why?" she asked quietly.

It hadn't occurred to Jack that he would have to explain himself so quickly, and he lowered his staff, trying to find the words to rationalize his story. A slight breeze rustled in the tops of the trees above them, but didn't reach the ground below the tangles of branches. Jack put a hand in his own hair, gripping it, trying to pull the right answer from his mind and keep himself anchored to the earth.

"I. . . I have never spoken to anyone before. Ever," said Jack slowly, watching for signs that Elsa was going to run away.

It took a moment for her to digest the information. 'What do you mean 'never'? Don't you have parents? People you know in Pennsylvania?"

She sounded as desperate as Jack was, trying just as hard to rationalize everything. It seemed clearer and clearer that she was stifling her powers.

"I don't know anyone," answered Jack, "And I never have. You are the first living person I have talked to in my entire. . . existence." Jack found it hard to say the word life. It suddenly didn't seem to apply to him, as he looked down at his seventeen-year-old hands, having never changed in the past century.

Elsa closed her eyes, taking in a shaky breath. Jack took another step towards her, his foot crunching in the frozen snow, and her eyes flashed open immediately, as hard as steel.

"Don't come near me," she said, attempting to disguise the tremble in her voice. "I can protect myself from you now, and if you make any move to hurt me, I will take my leave immediately."

Jack froze, trying to figure out his next move, more frustration jolting through him with every moment.

"I promise, I am not going to hurt you," he said finally, wincing at the brittleness of his own voice. The situation was getting hopeless; he had to make her understand before she ran away. Elsa was probably teetering on the edge of deciding whether or not she should make a break for it, and if Jack wasn't careful, she was going to tip faster than he originally thought.

Elsa didn't answer, still glaring with fear at him, her gaze darting around every few seconds. Jack recognized the look; she was trying to find a way through his defenses, because, he was, again, blocking her way down the path and back to the castle.

"Why did you even come out here? You knew I would still be waiting!" Jack shot at her, louder than he had intended, his eyes narrowing.

Elsa bit her lip, fear showing clearly in her expression now. She didn't believe that he was harmless to her. "I don't know. It was stupid. It's just - you let me go, and -"

She seemed unable to correctly word her thoughts for a moment.

"I don't know," she repeated again, her gaze sweeping to the snow. She sounded tired. "I probably shouldn't have. But I knew that I would probably regret it if I never found out."

Jack's eyes widened. He was shocked by the turn of events. "What do you mean? Found out what?"

Elsa's eyes rose upward to meet his once more, and for the first time that night, she was the eager one alongside her fear. "If I never found out if you were like me. I felt it, right by the lake that night. You had - just the same feel. I've never felt anyone else even similar to me, and you felt exactly the same."

Jack's heart picked up, if it were possible. Without words, he lifted his staff and pointed it at Elsa. Instantly, bitter terror replaced the eagerness on her face, and she took another step back, fumbling inside her cloak for something.

"What are you doing -?" she said, clumsily drawing a short knife just as she broke off into a scream. Jack had shot a bolt of frost directly towards her. However, right before it struck her, it burst into a cloud as if it had hit an invisible wall. Elsa still gave a few shrieks as the snow rained down around her, catching in her pale hair and glittering in the dim light. She brandished the knife in alternating directions, always returning it to Jack, but sometimes switching to point its quivering blade at innocent snowflakes, floating down to the ground.

When all the snow had fell from the air, Elsa stopped swinging her weapon around, and looked up at Jack. Shock and fear and hope were intermingling on her face.

"I - I - you -" Her mumblings were almost incoherent, until she dropped the knife where it fell, forgotten into the trampled snow around her. Then she ran at Jack, and he promptly dropped his staff in surprise, instinctively raising his arms to protect himself from the girl sprinting towards him. Instead of attacking Jack, however, she simply grabbed both of his outstretched hands, pulling them to her face so she could examine them, and the patterns of frost that were always present on his palms. Completely shocked by the turn of events, Jack was rendered speechless. The wind picked up for a moment, and a few snowflakes landed on Jack's face and melted on his suddenly warm cheeks.

"How do you do it? How do you control it?" Elsa asked fiercely. She looked up from his hands and into his gaze, her eyes as blue as ice, and shockingly close to his face, barely suppressed hope and excitement intermingling with determination clear in her expression. He couldn't help feeling how warm her hands were, gripping his, and how her pulse was clear and fast against the skin of his wrist. His cheeks flushed further.

"I. . . I can teach you," said Jack finally.

Elsa stared at him for another moment before apparently realizing her position. She took a step back from him and folded her hands behind her back. Her face was again, completely proper and elegant. Jack, however, was still in shock.

"What do I need to do?" asked Elsa.

* * *

**THERE WE ARE. And don't get scared if I don't update a little bit. I'll do it as soon as I caaaaan. It may be the weekend, but I still have several essays and presentations due today and tomorrow. Ugh. I would much rather be writing fanfiction, but. What can you do?**

**CIAO.**


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